Generally, in the context of software installations, a computer system uses source media to install the software. For example, a computer system may be running a prior version of an operating system and a user wants to install the newest version of the operating system. The source media includes the latest version of the operating system, and the computer system installs the new operating system by reading files from the source media.
In one case, the owner of the operating system assumes the computer system has the prior version of the operating system installed, and configures the format of the source media such that the prior version of the operating system can boot from the source media in an OS environment. For example, the source media may not be in a bootable configuration. However, the source media provides a program configured to extract the necessary components for installing the OS from the source media, save the components on the hard drive of the computer system, and configure the components in a bootable configuration. However, to be able to run the program, the computer needs to have a prior installation of an operating system. That is, if the computer does not have a prior operating system installed, the computer system cannot first boot thus meaning the computer system can never run the program to generate the bootable version of the new OS.
To allow the computer system to boot from the source media, the computer system must “re-master” the source media before installing the operating system. In the re-mastering process, the computer system creates a new source media by creating a sector-by-sector copy of the source media, and then modifying the copy into a configuration in which the firmware of the computer system can boot from.
While re-mastering may be effective in overcoming the challenges posed by such un-installable OS source media, total re-mastering of source media may have costs. For example, the newly configured copy of the source media requires a large memory allocation, such as several Gigabytes of disk space. Also, the re-mastering process requires upfront time to perform the necessary copying and reconfiguring operations before starting the installation process.